Even The Director Of ‘Crash’ Thinks ‘Crash’ Shouldn’t Have Won Best Picture

Crash, Paul Haggis’ ineffective look at racial anxiety in Los Angeles, has the reputation of being the Worst Best Picture Winner Ever, but judging by Rotten Tomatoes, that’s not exactly correct. With a 75 percent “Fresh” rating, Crash is in the bottom 12, but nowhere near as critically loathed as Out of Africa (53 percent) or The Broadway Melody (42 percent). Yet, Oscar academics still debate how it won in 2005, with the popular conclusion being that people were scared to vote for Brokeback Mountain, because a vote for Ang Lee’s film meant a vote for HOMOSEXUALITY.

Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so. There were great films that year. Good Night and Good Luck, amazing film. Capote, terrific film. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, great film. And Spielberg’s Munich. I mean please, what a year. Crash for some reason affected people, it touched people. And you can’t judge these films like that. I’m very glad to have those Oscars. They’re lovely things. But you shouldn’t ask me what the best film of the year was because I wouldn’t be voting for Crash, only because I saw the artistry that was in the other films. Now however, for some reason that’s the film that touched people the most that year. So I guess that’s what they voted for, something that really touched them. And I’m very proud of the fact that Crash does touch you. People still come up to me more than any of my films and say, “That film just changed my life.” I’ve heard that dozens and dozens and dozens of times. So it did its job there. I mean I knew it was the social experiment that I wanted, so I think it’s a really good social experiment. Is it a great film? I don’t know. (Via HitFix)

It’s weird that we’re still talking about this a decade later, when everyone knows Best Picture should have gone to Oldboy (it was released in South Korea in 2003, but didn’t make it to the states until 2005). That film taught the world more about tension than Crash ever did.

It’s pretty much universally agreed that the real Best Picture out of the nominees was Brokeback Mountain, but the Academy is very old and many of its voters are still very deep in the closet, or wondering why that nice Rock Hudson could never settle down with a girl.

@Greed True. Guess you can’t argue that. Good Night wasn’t bad at all. I think I just had very high hopes for Capote and, aside from PSH, was super dry and mentally was having to tell myself to stick with it till the end.

@BrianB “A History of Violence” is possibly my favorite movie where they threw out the comic book completely. Seriously, it and the movie have not a damn thing to do with each other, and it doesn’t matter.

Ah yes, completely forgot about those. I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in a hospital bed surrounded by noisy machines, so I couldn’t hear all of the Downey/Kilmer dialogue. But liked it as far as I got it. Batman Begins was a solid Batman movie for the most part, definitely enjoyed it more than The Dark Knight. A History of Violence did nothing for me, but I did like it’s Russian-English cousin Eastern Promises. Still need to see The Constant Garderner and Brick, heard good things about them.

I love Brick and History of Violence. Crash is not classic but it’s far from the worst Best Picture ever. I hate Forrest Gump a lot, and I doubt that Dances With Wolves, Million $ Baby or Slumdog would hold up on a second viewing.

Crash is such an overbearing, tedious and obvious hack job that I only managed to make it about 40 minutes into film before turning it off out of boredom. I knew from that childishly amateurish opening monologue by Don Cheadle that the writing was on the level of a high school student who thought he was Orson Welles. Just putrid shit…

For a while Holllywood got into a real rut with the ponderous, overbearing, bleak one-word titled films: Crash, Babel, Traffic…

It’s like everyone had the same idea: “Three or four unrelated story-lines full of horrible people being horrible to innocent people who didn’t deserve what they got because, hey, that’s life. Then at the end…Twist! the stories somehow intertwine. And everyone’s miserable. Hells Yeah! I smell Oscar!”

SHOCKED THAT A HOLLYWOOD INSIDER COULD BE SO DENSE…
. “Now however, for some reason that’s the film that touched people the most that year”… Crash won for at least 3 reasons; A– “Brokeback” was the picture that an enlightened person was suppolsed to vote for”, which bugged the blue collar Academy members,and it peaked too early. … B– Crash sent out copies of the movie JUST BEFORE THE VOTE (Haggis is acting naive in omitting this)…. C– The “People who were touched the most: were the blue collar movie people — grips, electricians, and more — who have to deal with the constant Los Angeles struggle of dealing with different races all day every day, which was the subject of this provoactive, but disjointed movie, which was affecting, but had HUGE flaws,____________________________
Brokeback would have won, even against that, if there were not RESENTMENT AGAINST GAYS BY THE VOTERS

2005 was a weak field of Best Picture nominees, and most of the year’s actual best movies (Batman Begins, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Match Point, Sin City) were either not nominated or were totally not the Academy’s cup of tea.

Brokeback and GN&GL were both very good movies and either would’ve been a deserving winner. I actually didn’t think Crash was all that bad, though in no way should it have won Best Picture. Capote was a bore aside from great performances from PSH, Collins and Keener. Munich completely fell apart in the second half of the movie and it’s one of Spielberg’s worst.